Work and distraction
Today was a long slog. I spent six hours entering edits, pictures, and layout for a single chapter. Granted, it is the longest chapter in the entire book, but still. Six. Hours. By the end of it I was eyeing the remaining 10 chapters with a sense of panic. If I spent that long on all of them, we would run out of time before I ran out of editing. Just as I untangled my head from the chapter of doom, email arrived with all our tables and charts. In color. The book is black and white. I broke the tables while converting them to grayscale, but fortunately Howard and the table designer rescued me from my panic and reassured me that all will be well. Then I had to scramble to put together a file for a “wetproof” which is a test print of images and text using the actual ink and paper. Got that done too. Which was a great relief, since that was supposed to be the highest priority task for today.
Part of the reason that the chapter of doom took so long is because there were so many distractions. I had a steady stream of email all morning long. Some from Tracy. Some from friends. Several from our printer. Several from merchandise partners. The shiniest emails were the ones containing mock-ups of the XDM cover design. We have finally arrived at a design that is so pretty I want to hug it. The last bits of shiny are being applied and then we will get to show it off to the world.
Speaking of shiny, one of the big distractions of the morning was the doorbell. It was a Fed Ex delivery from China. We have our advance copies of The Scrapyard of Insufferable Arrogance. The rest of the copies are on a boat and will arrive in a month. It is beautiful. I held it and flipped through it. Then I was struck with the realization that it is as much my book as Howard’s. He did all the writing and drawing, but I’m the one who made it be a book. I organized it all. I arranged for the printing. Holding the book was a very triumphal moment. It would have been nice if Howard and I could have spent the day basking in the glory of accomplishment. Instead we tiredly put the shiny books down and headed back to work. It will be several days before we can do the traditional auctioning of an advance copy.
Bit by bit we are getting closer to finished. Every day I get to color in some more boxes on my XDM tracking chart. Tomorrow will be a satisfying day. I’m set up to knock down a bunch of boxes quickly.